About Us
Staff
Leonard Matczynski, Executive and Co-Artistic Director
With a career in the performing arts spanning 30 years, Leonard Matczynski has worked as a concert violist, teacher, and arts administrator. As the director of Apple Hill, he makes decisions that shape Apple Hill’s performance and administrative structure, its concert and touring programs, the Playing for Peace™ initiative, its long-range plans, and the development of new programs. He is the spokesman for Apple Hill’s mission and its representative to the music community, patrons, and audiences. As a concert violist, he studied with Martha Strongin Katz, Heidi Castleman, and Karen Tuttle, participated in chamber music studies with members of the Budapest, Cleveland, and Guarneri Quartets, and pursued advanced studies at the International Musician's Seminar in Prussia Cove, England with Sandor Vegh. He has been a soloist with many musical organizations, as well as a guest artist in summer festivals at Aspen, Tanglewood, Marlboro, Monadnock Music, and Pepsico Summerfare. In addition, Mr. Matczynski has been deeply involved in the training and mentoring of young performing artists. He has been on the faculty of The Walnut Hill School for the Arts, New England Conservatory of Music, and the Tanglewood Music Center, and is currently on the viola and chamber music faculty of The Boston Conservatory and Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music. From 1993-2007, he was the founding Executive Director of Emmanuel Music in Boston, MA, and was responsible for the organization’s development through the production of over 200 cantatas of J.S. Bach. He also founded Emmanuel Music’s chamber series and expanded Emmanuel Music’s innovative concert series. He has taken Emmanuel Music on tours of the U.S. and Europe with choreographer Mark Morris and stage director Peter Sellars, and has co-produced six highly-acclaimed compact discs with Emmanuel Music— among them, a Bach Cantata disc with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson that was named one of the top CDs of 2003 by the New York Times. Mr. Matczynski lives in Boston and is married to Mary Ruth Ray, violist of the Lydian String Quartet.
Contact: lenny@applehill.org
Vicky Pittman, Program Director
A native of Indiana with a B.F.A. in Theatre and Speech Communications, Vicky Pittman has worked as a freelance actress/director in Boston and New York for several years, mostly developing new works that carried a strong social/political theme with outreach work in underprivileged schools. She has worked as a publicist at Harvard University Press and has traveled and toured in over 12 countries. Ms. Pittman spent a few years living in the UK working as a drama director/teacher and managing a Young Musicians Cultural Center in Windsor, Berkshire with over 3,000 students. Upon her return to the USA, she was happy to find herself back on the East Coast as the Summer Administrator for the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music and feels supporting outstanding chamber music and the Playing for Peace™ mission is the driving force for her work there. She has recently started managing the Outreach Education program for the Colonial Theatre in Keene, NH on a part time basis.
Contact: music@applehill.org
Meg Stout, Public Relations/Marketing Coordinator and Office Assistant
Meg Stout graduated cum laude with a B.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Maine at Farmington (2007), where she was a member of the Honors Program, Honors Council, and activist organizations. In 2006, she went on student exchange to Beijing, China, where she studied Mandarin Chinese at Beijing University of Technology and worked as an English language editor and tutor. She has also served as an editorial intern at Yankee Magazine and Beloit Poetry Journal. In addition to her Apple Hill position, Ms. Stout is a volunteer Crisis Intervention Worker at Monadnock Center for Violence Prevention in Keene, NH.
Contact: meg@applehill.org